Trial reportInternational immunopharmacology2021
Pentoxifylline decreases serum LDH levels and increases lymphocyte count in COVID-19 patients: Results from an external pilot study.
Trial report in International immunopharmacology, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 17 papers, 3 of them syntheses that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
17 citing papers in PubMed, 3 syntheses or guidelines pooled it, 19 citations in OpenAlex.
- Pentoxifylline in COVID-19 and considerations for its research in long COVID.Inflammation research : official journal of the European Histamine Research Society ... [et al.] · 2024Pooled it
- Comparative effectiveness of pharmacological interventions on mortality and the average length of hospital stay of patients with COVID-19: a systematic review and meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials.Expert review of anti-infective therapy · 2022Pooled it
- Coronavirus Disease 2019 as Cause of Viral Sepsis: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis.Critical care medicine · 2021Pooled it
- Pentoxifylline effects on hospitalized patients with COVID19: A randomized, double-blind clinical trial.International immunopharmacology · 2021Trial
- Oral pentoxifylline as a novel adjunct to standard therapy in pediatric community-acquired pneumonia: a randomized controlled trial.Pediatric research · 2026Article
- The role of reactive oxygen species in severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-COV-2) infection-induced cell death.Cellular & molecular biology letters · 2024Review
- The role of cell death in SARS-CoV-2 infection.Signal transduction and targeted therapy · 2023Review
- Pentoxifylline Effects on Hospitalized COVID-19 Patients with Cytokine Storm Syndrome: A Randomized Clinical Trial.Pharmaceuticals (Basel, Switzerland) · 2023Article
- Prospects of Novel and Repurposed Immunomodulatory Drugs against Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome (ARDS) Associated with COVID-19 Disease.Journal of personalized medicine · 2023Review
- An overview on the treatments and prevention against COVID-19.Virology journal · 2023Review
- The Lactate and the Lactate Dehydrogenase in Inflammatory Diseases and Major Risk Factors in COVID-19 Patients.Inflammation · 2022Review
- Cell deaths: Involvement in the pathogenesis and intervention therapy of COVID-19.Signal transduction and targeted therapy · 2022Review
- A raising dawn of pentoxifylline in management of inflammatory disorders in Covid-19.Inflammopharmacology · 2022Review
- Major coagulation disorders and parameters in COVID-19 patients.European journal of medical research · 2022Review
- Pentoxifylline as a Potential Adjuvant Therapy for COVID-19: Impeding the Burden of the Cytokine Storm.Journal of clinical medicine · 2021Review
- Phosphodiesterase Inhibitors in Acute Lung Injury: What Are the Perspectives?International journal of molecular sciences · 2021Review
- Efficacy and Effect of Inhaled Adenosine Treatment in Hospitalized COVID-19 Patients.Frontiers in immunology · 2021Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
9 authors at 2 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
We have previously hypothesized that pentoxifylline could be beneficial for the treatment of COVID-19 given its potential to restore the immune response equilibrium, reduce the impact of the disease on the endothelium and alveolar epithelial cells, and improve the circulatory function.Serum lactate dehydrogenase (LDH) and lymphocyte count are accessible biomarkers that correlate with the severity of COVID-19, the need for hospitalization, and mortality, reflecting the host immune response's contribution to the seriousness of SARS-CoV-2 infection. We carried out this external pilot study on 38 patients with moderate and severe COVID-19 to test the effect pentoxifylline on parameters such as LDH, lymphocyte count, days of hospitalization, mortality, and proportion of patients requiring intubation. Twenty-six patients were randomized to receive 400 mg of pentoxifylline t.i.d. plus standard therapy (pentoxifylline group), while the rest received the standard treatment (control group). Linear regression models were built for statistically significant parameters. Pentoxifylline treatment was associated with a 64.25% increase (CI95% 11.83, 116.68) in lymphocyte count and a 29.61% decrease (CI95% 15.11, 44.10) in serum LDH. Although a trend towards reduced days of hospitalization, mortality, and proportion of patients requiring intubation was observed, no statistically significant difference was found for these parameters. Our findings open the possibility of pentoxifylline being repositioned as a drug for COVID-19 treatment with the advantages of a proven safety profile, availability, and no risk of immunosuppression; however, this evidence needs to be confirmed in a pragmatic randomized controlled trial.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the Socratic graph.